Marketing, advertising & media intelligence

Marketing for $5 a day? As young Kiwi campervan rental company Lucky Rentals has shown, it's not impossible – if you're willing to crowdsource.

The one-year old company turned over its marketing to the public for 100 days, soliciting photos, videos, blog posts and other promotional material from fiverr.com, an online market where sellers offer their services for $5. And, as a result, chief executive Nathan Brand said traffic to the company website had grown by more than 50 percent.

“As a young company we need to be smart with how we spend our marketing money. So we created the Lucky Fiverr project: 100 days of fiverr.com gigs delivering content that is 100 percent sourced from the Fiverr site using creative and talented producers.”

Lucky Rentals, which has offices in Christchurch and Auckland, is up to day 30 of the project and has been posting the crowdsourced content on its blog every day.

“We’ve had some hilarious, ridiculous and downright strange results. From the Lucky Rentals rap by esalaah who has had over four million views on YouTube to a half naked obese man (user name Krazyretard) singing us happy birthday, each gig has been completely unique and a lot of fun to see brought to life."

He said it was a creative opportunity to try something new, engage customers and grow sales.

While putting your marketing in the hands of the public could be dangerous, Brand said getting people to do crazy things in the name of Lucky Rentals was paying off.

"As long as [the content] is not offensive or defamatory or anything like that, then we're quite happy to put them up, whatever they are."

Brand said he had not had to reject any submissions yet, although he had received one disappointing entry that failed to live up to expectations.

He said the benefit of crowdsourcing marketing material was that the company could potentially repurpose it in the future.

"It gives us this great big slew of content that we own and can use."

Even if nobody else got a laugh out of it, he said, at least the Lucky Rentals crew did.

He said businesses always ran into the same issue when planning a marketing strategy – wanting to do something quirky and fun that usually exceeded the budget. But it was hard to go wrong with $5 per day.

He said Lucky Rentals had previously set up a Facebook page and Google Adwords, but wanted to do something that wasn't "just another cleverly designed banner".

While companies frequently used Fiverr to solicit designs for logos, Brand said he hadn't come across any other businesses using Fiverr in the way Lucky Rentals was.

"100 days of blogging is something out of the box," he said. “The Fiverr community exhibits the same kind of 'out of the box' marketing as Lucky Rentals – and that’s what we like.”

If we find you doing these things, your comments will be edited without recourse and you may be asked to go away and reconsider your actions.
We respect the right to free speech and anonymous comments. Don’t abuse the privilege.

On Monday, Whittaker’s launched its latest novelty chocolate-lolly mash up with a chocolatey answer to retro bakesale treat coconut ice. The Coconut Ice Surprise chocolate has a twist though, 20c from each block goes to Plunket – a charity which New Zealanders agree is a worthy cause. However, to relate the chocolate to the charity, Whittaker's has built the campaign around baby gender reveal parties, causing a backlash from the public who argue gender norms have expanded beyond blue for boys and pink for girls.

Genius From Elsewhere

1

With over 10,000 fires occuring in South Korea residential homes every year, Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance has created a flower vase that doubles as a throwable fire extinguisher. The hope is it will raise awareness to the public safety issue of home fire safety.

2

Advertisers have stopped buying ads on YouTube after their ads appeared on children's videos where pedophiles had infiltrated the comment section.The New York Times investigates the comments.

3

The internet has been up in arms about a supposed 'Anti-LGBT' emoji, featuring a rainbow flag alongside the "no" symbol. However, according to Time, the emoji causing offence is actually "an unfortunate implementation of the standards that govern how text is displayed on our device".

4

This year, Super Bowl audiences were treated to a 45-second video of Andy Warhol eating a Burger King Whopper. It was certainly a campaign unlike any before, but did it work? Adweek takes a look.

5

As of 1 March, Queenslanders will be able to include one of five emojis alongside their licence places. The options—the laughing-crying face, the winking face, the sunglasses face, the heart-eyed face, or the classic smiley face—are courtesy of Personalised Plates Queensland.

Gold Sponsors

Silver Sponsors

Why we like it: Infomercial-style ads take us right back to the glorious days of old when we were sick – but not too sick – home from school and got the sought-after opportunity to watch daytime TV. There was literally nothing greater in an eight-year-old's life. So for that reason, these ads get a big tick from us. There's humour, and, despite what often happens when radio hosts venture into a visual format, it doesn't miss the mark.

Who's it for: House of Travel by the in-house team

Why we like it: Who doesn't love when brands bring back a break-out star from one of their earlier campaigns? To be completely honest, we didn't recognise Lucy on first glance, but after a quick trip down memory lane, we placed her as Miss Lucy from that singing and dancing retro campaign House of Travel launched more than a decade ago. We like the continuity of this ad and watching a man choke on his drink after a snapback from a woman doesn't hurt either.

Who's it for: Joblist by Badger Communications

Why we like it: Sonia is a dead-set hero. We are introduced to her glamorous, visor-wearing face peering out from behind a freshly-levelled hedge and the next thing we know she's no ordinary arborist. We watch Sonia as she looks into that shrub's soul and reveals the schnauzer-shaped masterpiece of her own creation. We never knew we needed someone with Sonia's skill set in our lives, but now we know we do. Thank you Sonia for showing us the light.